Affordable Housing Planned for Crenshaw Boulevard

As excavation for the $2-billion Crenshaw Line continues to frustrate business owners and motorists alike, two locally-based non-profit organizations are working to build affordable housing near the light rail line's forthcoming northern terminus.

Los Angeles-based American Communities, LLC has filed plans with the city to build a low-rise complex known as the Crenshaw Villas Apartments. The project would replace an existing commercial building at 2631-2645 Crenshaw Boulevard.

Plans call for a five-story structure containing 50 one-and-two-bedroom apartments, 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 36 parking stalls in a partially underground garage. Residential units would be reserved for low-income seniors who earn less than half of the city's median household income.

Three blocks south, the Long Beach-based Retirement Housing Foundation (RHF) has filed plans for a second affordable housing complex at 3411-3429 Crenshaw Boulevard.

The approximately one-acre development site, currently occupied by a series of nondescript one-story structures, would birth a "Modern Spanish"-inspired building known as the Crenshaw Gardens Apartments. The five-story edifice would feature 49 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments on its upper floors and a combined 5,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space at ground level. Two floors of garage space would sit beneath the residential-retail complex, offering parking accommodations for up to 68 vehicles and 54 bicycles.

Like its neighbor to the north, the Crenshaw Gardens Apartments would be reserved for low-income seniors earning less than half the Los Angeles median household income.

Both developments emphasis their proximity to rail transit. Crenshaw Villas, located just south of Adams Boulevard, would sit slightly over a half-mile from an existing at-grade Expo Line station and a future subway terminal. Crenshaw Gardens, located on Jefferson Boulevard, would sit less than a quarter-mile from the station.